Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Sickness, sadness, pain, old age, even death — none of these can really get at the person who lives in the One.
They are not afraid, because they have handed their whole mind over to the love that holds everything.
This is a bold claim, and it needs care: Guru Arjan is not saying the devotee never gets sick or old or never dies. He is saying these things "do not even approach" the deepest part of them — they cannot reach the settled center. Fear is what magnifies suffering; it makes pain echo. When the mind has been surrendered (man arpiaa) to the One, fear loses its grip, and so hardship loses its sting even while the body lives out its natural life. The fearlessness here is nirbhau — the same quality named in the Mool Mantar — not the absence of hard things, but freedom from being ruled by them.
When you're afraid of something, does the fear itself make it feel bigger? What helps the fear settle down?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI